These Lonely Hands
by handschuhmaus
Summary: Once a friend, now merely an observer, who cannot seem to exert any measure of control over his world or hers, he is losing her, and maybe everything.
1. Signal and Sign, Apply Some Pressure

_I'm trying for specific word counts in this story. Each chapter is to be 500 words, excepting this. (and that Word counts differently than ffnet!) For this reason, the disclaimer is up front and will not be repeated, but continues to apply: **I do not own these characters, or their world, nor do I own the songs used for inspiration. **(from the band Maximo Park). The name's from the first song on their first album. I am not sure exactly where this story will go. Right now, the writing style is inspired by coffeeonthepatio's, (do look her up, wonderful writer!) but I don't guarantee this will continue._

The train did not come, and so he had to wait for the later one, which was the one she had always—they had always taken before. He had not wanted to take it this year, because she had changed. They had changed. For the worse, probably, in both their cases. As a no longer welcome guest, he had witnessed the arguments (they were nothing, though), and the disintegration of the ties between her and her parents. She looked far fairer now, seemed far fouler, and he had kept his mouth shut, but it was really hardly him who ruined her. The lies were not likely to help her, in his opinion, yet as it was her doing entirely, he had no stake in the matter. Nor did he have any influence, the disgraced former friend.

And when she finally appeared, she was not the girl he had known. She was finer, somehow, of body and of carriage, and refused to face him, her former friend, instead staring worriedly and fixedly upon the outsized clock. He knew she was ever estranged from her once beloved sister, and that for whatever reason she was in ill graces with her parents, but more importantly he knew that he had thrown the last word that would break their friendship and that therefore she was no longer his Lily at all, to inquire about, to worry over, to comfort.

Their train pulled in, to a screeching halt, and he did not speak to her.

* * *

><p>"I <em>thought<em>," she said, "that I would buy some better robes. Is that not a good enough reason?"

He had wandered into Madame Malkin's, where he did not belong, though she did (even if the Evanses could not afford the fanciest of her stock), and he had asked her what she was doing there. Perhaps he had meant to ask what was wrong, though the words did not come, and he offered no sign of intended sympathy.

"No. It's fine."

The apothecary's, where he went next, turning away from her in a billow of robes, reeked strongly of eucalyptus. She walked in after him, with a set of dress robes in emerald green, over one arm, but turned away from him and stared at the selection of cauldrons. He reached for a pot of daisy roots to examine their quality. He wasn't interested—they were merely a distraction to keep him from staring after her and those robes.

"Why do you care, Severus Snape? Why won't you stop following me? Don't want to associate with 'mudbloods'? Then just quit it!"

"I'm hardly following you," he retorted coolly. This was the first time she had mentioned the incident since, and he could not bring himself to apologize now, even though he hadn't really meant it—hadn't really ever meant it. They had not really spoken, either, which did follow from the grave insult. But it was an old wound now, at which he kept poking.

She swore at him, and she did not swear.


	2. Graffiti, Postcard of a Painting

The trees had begun to turn, and the hues reminded him of Lily, who loved the autumn, but the news he received that morning on the breakfast table was no good. "Sick and dying", everything a reminder of the mortality of even wizards, scrawled in an untidy print on the corner of a greasy news rag that stank of fish and vinegar, delivered he knew not how nor wherefore by some anonymous owl. How did you respond when you learned the only parent you wouldn't disown at the first opportunity, the only one who actually cared, lingered fleetingly in this world, one foot on Death's threshold?

He wondered what he would recall when she did die, whether there would be any more memories than joy at his OWLs, or whether he would ever see her again alive. A gaggle of third-years brushed past him, yelling at each other, and yanked him unceremoniously from his reverie.

It was then Lily walked up to him, and he was tempted to question her.

"What happened?"

"Nothing," he responded too quickly, but without malice.

"I know something's wrong." She looked away into the trees, and he seemed to see in her face that Hogwarts was now home more than home was, that Hogsmeade was simpler than Petunia or Mr. Evans or even her mum.

"Why don't we go get a butterbeer, and you tell me what's wrong?" But this was the old Lily then, and he wasn't sure if it was a worthy try.

* * *

><p>She stared up at him from the photograph, big green eyes, green as emeralds. They had noticed, of course (it was inevitable), that he and Lily were no longer friends. Or at least, they were no longer what he had thought friends were, which was what they had been.<p>

And he would finally be accepted among the Slytherins, despite his horrible Muggle father, and maybe even secure the approval of some of the purebloods. Except that they hated Lily, as he really didn't, for the mere fact of her parentage, when her parents were good people. And they didn't approve of him, nor his mother, for Tobias Snape's sake, which had never been any sort of a trade off in his opinion, but it wasn't really right. He didn't like his mother's marriage, and wasn't over fond of Muggles, but condemning all of them? Seemed foolish.

Still… It was tempting, very tempting. He would gain power, acceptance, and prestige by joining, and they did not condemn, as Gryffindors always did, the Dark Arts. A sponsorship for his long hoped for potions mastery was to be counted upon with such connections, as probably was further training in the murky areas of magic. He did not think for even one brief moment that it was no worthwhile trade-off, that it was a foolish soul-selling and no fair bargain.

Wouldn't it be worth a bit of sacrifice to gain things he longed for so? To fulfill his blood as the Half Blood Prince?


	3. Going Missing, I Want You to Stay

He had not yet told Professor Slughorn whether he would be staying at Hogwarts over Christmas hols or not. Lucius had, as he was a potential inductee, invited him to stay at Malfoy Manor, and he had not yet once gone back home over Christmas, because it was an exercise in futility to try to have any semblance of a celebration. About the only thing that had ever happened at Christmas was that the men at the pub brought out stronger spirits, in the "spirit of the season", and Tobias tended to get quite sick. He was hardly expecting any different, but he hadn't heard how Mother was doing since October, that both good news and bad, because he _would_ have heard if she had died, but silence didn't imply her improvement.

At every turn and corner he seemed to be reminded of something or other distressing. Whether his dying mother, his impending induction into the Death Eaters, or the fact that Lily had been dating his archenemy James Potter since Halloween, there didn't seem to be any good news for Severus Snape. Worse, one day he had stood beside her because of something or other Slughorn wanted to do, and they had exchanged no words, yet the look she gave him was pathos and melancholy, anger and empathy all, and he had kissed her—felt worse than a rapist when she pushed him away and strode off in anger.

It had begun to sleet when he exited the castle.

* * *

><p>Lily was bundled into a long, beautiful coat, and a not-Gryffindor scarf around her neck, but carried nothing more than a handbag, and for once since the end of last year, was not surrounded by a gaggle of her housemates. In fact, she approached him, and he still saw that lost look, that he wished he could make better, that he wished he could change, even though he couldn't—couldn't change his own life, let alone hers.<p>

"Sev." She said, and the real big green eyes looked into his, shimmering with threatening tears. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know what's wrong, really. I don't understand it. You, and Tuney, and Da, and Mum—it's like everything's changing, and I don't know where we belong, or why nobody thinks I do—or you. I-I wish it were just the way it was."

He looked steadily into those eyes, but he was paralyzed to act, to comfort her.

"I don't want it to change, Sev. I don't want it to change!"

"Yet it does," he whispered, under his breath, almost unintentionally.

"Promise me you don't hate me, Sev, please. Promise me you won't. I know you act like you do, but please. Don't."

"I promise," he said in a shiver that was most certainly not from the frigid air. "I promised before—I meant it, Lily."

"Lily!" Potter called from elsewhere on the grounds, and the red-haired angel with sorrow all over her face walked away from him.

_A/N: Since ffnet doesn't do the same word counts as Word, anyway, I'm going to mention that it is my one-year anniversary of my first story posted on ffnet! Hurrah! And, a couple story notes: This is set in a much closer to canon universe than my standard alternate universe, but it is not trying for as canon as possible. Things will likely turn out differently. And, if you're curious about the time line: this first part of the story is taking place in their sixth year, in alternate months-each pair of stories has a fairly short time between them-on the order of a few days, instead of a month._


	4. Limassol, The Coast Is Always Changing

_A/N: And... we're taking a bit of turn from canon here, but (this is classed under "mystery", after all!) I'll let you guess at what exactly the meaning behind this is. Though I will note that nodding could be taken to be a grudging but benign form of acknowledgment *wink*._

It was Hogsmeade weekend, again, and he didn't like to see her with Potter, but despite the winter dragging on persistently and the two days that had been just a little warm, effecting a street full of muddy slush, things seemed to be looking up, just a little. The new cloak and robes from a mysterious benefactor somehow changed how people looked at him, especially Slughorn. They were new, brand-new (although they had been washed before being given to him), a luxury he'd never had before—could never afford before—and especially not out of a dense woolen, silken twill practically redolent of wealth. The cloak appeared on 9 January, wrapped in plain brown paper, but the robes had been left under the Slytherin common room tree on Christmas day, and he had been reluctant to wear them, except that he had been provided with four sets. The cloak was wool, a grey-on-black jacquard, and somehow Mother had managed to send a scarf in Slytherin colors. Today, as he had frequently, he wore them and it somehow meant that the other Slytherins avoided him. But it was, if he could manage to grasp at a completely foreign feeling, the avoidance of one who baffled them, befuddled them beyond reason by suddenly changing his footing in society, such that everyone else looked at him with newfound respect.

"Snivellus!" Black exclaimed, as Severus glanced in a store window.

"Leave him be, Sirius," Lupin scolded, and nodded at him as they walked past.

* * *

><p>He was completely unaccustomed to being summonsed for the weekend, and he was further unaccustomed to then boarding a train and finding himself at some odd station, only to be met by a dark haired man in blue robes who studied him silently for a moment, then took his hand and apparated them both to the still frigid seashore. They were quite entirely alone.<p>

"I take it you have adequate footwear?" the man inquired, raising an eyebrow.

"For what, sir?" he responded, "I hope this matter has nothing to do with the Dark Lord?"

The man looked quite confused for a moment, as if he didn't know what to say, but he handed Severus a parcel of wrinkled newsprint, inside which he found a new pair of dragonscale boots, felt lined, and for which he changed, childishly eager, the cracked leather oxfords on his feet.

"Eileen is recovering, though slowly," he said, as Severus fastened the second boot.

"Mum?" he asked, and mentally chastised the half-blood ignorant of propriety that he had been when he called her that.

"Yes, Severus, Eileen Teresa Prince," the man said, looking distantly out at the choppy foam.

He managed, if not smoothly, to inquire, "What about Father?"

"I don't know." And he repeated it. "I don't know what's become of him. And unfortunately my weekend is quite full of appointments and I have borrowed you only briefly. Come now."

He took Severus's hand as if coming to a decision, and apparated them to Hogsmeade.


	5. The Night I Lost My Head, Once A Glimpse

It had been a gross indiscretion on his part, attending the party. Of course, the Slytherins were happy that they had won a Quidditch match, and he hadn't taken a whole drink of the punch before the familiar odor made him set the glass violently on the too ornate tablecloth: firewhiskey didn't smell that different from its Muggle analog, but only older students were there, and though Slughorn had complacently turned a blind eye, attendance seemed to be limited to those who sympathized with the Dark Lord.

And to his shock, Severus had found, after examining himself all these months, (especially after he had been granted the reprieve from attention by the new robes and cloak) that he didn't. He really didn't. Muggles weren't evil, or vile, or filthy, or any of the host of other unfavorable adjectives frequently heaped upon them (excepting 'non-magical', a tautology) Nor were purebloods powerful exempla of perfection.

Trying to study potions for a certificate without pureblood money behind him, without any money behind him, really, considering his financial prospects, would be difficult, true, perhaps nigh on impossible. It was a crazy notion, really.

Yet it was the only way he would do this at all, and the epiphany somehow intoxicated him with an insane, inadvisable euphoria.

He was wandering the halls restlessly in that state when, like a sudden shower of ice cold water, he came upon Lily, her blouse askew and partially unbuttoned, eagerly kissing Potter in a nook on the third floor.

* * *

><p>It was the time of year when—firstly, though he wouldn't usually have thought about it, spring was coming to these latitudes—and secondly, and possibly more significantly, the fifth and seventh year classes were coaxed into revision for their important end-of-year tests (OWLs and NEWTs respectively) by teachers who slipped the material into class. The sixth years—as he was—did not have to worry about it for this year, which meant the Marauders were trying for springtime romance instead of reluctantly worrying about their scores. He, oddly enough, had been sent a parcel of quite helpful books with a note saying they would be helpful for his NEWTs.<p>

But at the moment he was far more concerned about Lily, an attitude which had previously caused him difficulty, he knew, but an inescapable feeling. The discomfort she had been carrying since the year began or before seemed to have become more intense of late.

She summed up the worry in a brief sentence, which did not speak for all the other things that had bothered her, the things he still couldn't do anything about, "He asked me to marry him, Severus."

He looked at her, his angel Lily, and he thought about Potter, trying to weigh him without their enmity, but somehow he did not think the rash, brash, hero-complex, cruel Gryffindor her equal.

Yet there was nothing at all he could say to this, because he held no alternative.

Green eyes met black, and she turned from him.

_A/N: There is only one more chapter, a three-parter, left for _A Certain Trigger_, after which I may depart from this particular story entry and begin a new one in a slightly different format to continue the tale with _Our Earthly Pleasures_-as I currently do not intend to include _Missing Songs_ in this storyline. Intended: skipping a period to after James and Lily are married. There might also be a side story-in yet a different format, likely without Maximo Park inspiration-to explain further the mysterious man and what's going on with Eileen._


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